We Never Change
by galleywinter
Summary: He had changed, and so had she. But *they*? They hadn't changed. With any luck, they never would. Three vignettes following Shepard and Kaidan through Mass Effect, ME2, and the beginning of ME3. Rated T to be safe.
1. Shepard

Disclaimer: Bioware owns all. I'm just playing in their sandbox.

* * *

><p><strong>I.<strong>

"Are you eating what I think you're eating?" He sounded vaguely horrified as he slid into the seat across from her at the mess table. Her mouth might as well have been glued shut, the sticky sweet _wonderful_ stuff sticking her tongue to the roof of her mouth, so she just nodded and made a noise of assent. _Yes, Kaidan, yes I_ am _eating exactly what you think I am_. She reached for the glass on his tray and took a swig, the fizzy orange drink cutting through the goop and sparking citrus all the way down her tongue.

"It's comfort food, I guess," she said softly as she replaced his drink. One of his eyebrows shot up toward his hair.

"I don't think I've ever known anyone who thought of MREs as a _comfort food_." She shrugged and thoughtfully turned the remnants of the sandwich over in her fingers.

"My dad was always the cook of the family, and he's always loved to do it. So when Mom was the one on duty, we ate like royalty. But Mom? Mom can't boil water with a cookbook and a food simulator. So it was always MREs when Dad was on duty. Peanut butter and jelly was always my favorite. Dad made an actual peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my lunch once when I was in grade school. He was so confused when I brought it home. I told him I wouldn't eat it because it 'wasn't right'. I think that broke his heart a little." She took another bite of her sandwich and reached for Kaidan's glass again. He picked it up and nearly thrust it into her hands.

"I hate the orange ones but it was all they had left," he said as he speared some sort of congealed glop on his plate with a fork, then examined it with a furrowed brow. "Go easy on it though, it's one of the biotic drinks. Extra calories, electrolytes balanced a little differently, all that good stuff. I wouldn't drink the whole thing if I were you."

She saluted him with the glass and took a swallow before replacing it on his tray and standing.

"You should really finish it then," she said. "We land on Virmire in an hour."

##

She was standing over Ash's weapons table, the disassembled rifles and pistols glaring at her accusingly. She began attempting to piece together which parts went with which gun, trying to phrase the letter she had to write to Mrs. Williams as she worked.

_Mrs. Williams,_

_I regret to inform you that your daughter was deemed an acceptable casualty on a failed mission on the planet Virmire. I chose to save Lieutenant Alenko instead of your daughter because he is the superior officer. He is an L2 biotic with minimal complications. He was tasked with arming a nuclear device that we were required to protect at all costs, so I wasn't really saving him over Ashley: I was protecting the bomb. And he's sort of my boyfriend, but I swear that's not why your daughter died._

She slammed her palms against the table top and swallowed thickly against the burn creeping up her throat. There was no winning in any of this. Ash had been a dear friend, but as hard as the call had been, saving Kaidan had been the right one. And it had nothing to do with "them" - whatever "they" were. Not that it made losing her any easier.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich slid against the edge of the table. She knew it had to be him and turned to thank him, but he was already walking back to the elevator. He gave her the faintest hint of a grin before he pressed the button and the elevator doors slid closed.

_Thought you could use some comfort food _was scrawled across the towel he'd wrapped the sandwich in.

**II.**

Horizon had been a disaster. She tried not to listen as Gardner made a vague noise of disgust when she squeezed the peanut butter packet against the flat, thin wheat "bread". She could hear her own teeth grinding at the whimper he made when she opened the jelly packet.

"Dismissed, Gardner," she gritted out. She gathered the sandwich and headed up to the Loft.

She plopped down in her desk chair and his holo flickered to life. She tore a chunk off the sandwich and shoved it into her mouth and tried to avoid thinking about how badly the whole thing had gone down, about how _wrong _it all had been.

##

Two weeks later, after she'd already received that sucker punch of an email and had begun attempting to process it, trying to determine _how _she wanted to process it, Gardner approached her in the kitchenette. He looked a bit concerned, and perhaps a bit sick.

"Did you requisition this, Commander?" He slid a datapad toward her across the countertop. She regarded him for a moment before flipping the datapad around and examining the information. She tried to fight the grin that pulled at her mouth and made her cheeks ache. "With all due respect, I'm not sure I'd know what to _do_with that, let alone so damned much of it. I fought hard to never have to use that sort of slop again, and you've been with me every step of that way, but this is-"

"I didn't order it, but don't worry about it. Just have it sent to the Loft. You'll never have to see it."

**III.**

The Collector base had been blown to hell and gone and she was back on the Citadel for repairs. 48 hours, she'd told him, before she needed to leave again. Top Secret this time, but for the right team. A dinner date that evening and a coffee when he met her in her hotel lobby the next morning to walk her to the Council chambers for her debrief later, and now they were having lunch in his apartment in the Wards.

"You have anything to drink?" she asked as she stood to carry her plate to the sink.

"Check the fridge," he answered. She deposited her plate and reached over to the refrigerator. The door swung open, and she shot him a curious glance.

"I thought you hated the orange ones," she said. He shrugged, and she could see the tightness in his mouth where he was trying not to grin.

"Yeah, but _you _don't."

##

She sat on the small cot with her head in her hands.

"Lunch time," her guard announced, his voice a bit too bright. He was a good kid, young, impressionable, and a bit in awe of the fact that he was responsible for _the _Commander Shepard. She sighed and looked up at him.

"Already?" she asked. "Time flies when you're having fun."

"We're not supposed to do this," he whispered conspiratorially, "not really. But since it's _you_, I figured once couldn't hurt. I have it on good authority that you'll like today's lunch." He lowered the barrier field, not even bothering to unholster his weapon (and she should probably talk to his superior about that later), and handed her the tray. "Peanut butter and jelly MRE and half an orange biotic drink. He was really specific about that last part. I'm not sure why he wants you to only have half of it, but-"

"It's okay, kid," she cut him off with a smile. "This is perfect." He stepped back and turned the barrier back on. Shepard sat down on her cot, her tray in her lap. In that instant it hit her: He had changed, and so had she. But they? They hadn't changed. With any luck, they never would.


	2. Kaidan

**I.**

He steadies his arm, holds his breath in an attempt to keep it from jostling, then exhales slowly as he twitches his finger _just so_.

"What're you up to, Alenko?"

He snaps his wrist sharply, closing his omni-tool.

"Just a bit of photography, ma'am." Her eyes widen appreciatively and her mouth drops open a bit, the barest hint of a grin curving the corner of her lips. And for a flash of a moment, he almost wishes he hadn't shut his tool down. Almost.

"Didn't know you were into holos," she smiles, walking back toward him.

"Just something I picked up," he says with a shrug. "It's kind of incredible, the things the camera captures that you completely miss."

"Why are you taking a holo of _this_ place?" she asks as she kneels in front of an unlocked crate, prying at the edges with her fingers. It's a fair question. Nodacrux has been nothing if not a hellish nightmare of horrifically empty colonies and the colonists who weren't _human_ any longer - taken against their will and forcibly mutated into Creepers, and the scientists responsible who make his lip curl and his stomach churn. He crouches down to help her, wedging his fingers into the long edge of the crate so she can work the top end unimpeded.

"There's still beauty here," he finally says. "It helps me remember what we're fighting to save." Her hands still on the crate and she turns to him, her eyes searching his face. His throat goes completely dry. When she finally speaks, it's so hushed that he's sure he would have missed it if he hadn't been watching her so intently.

"Maybe you could show me some time?"

"Yeah," he responds, and he can hear the thickness in his own voice, but he can't bring himself to care. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Later that night, he sits at a table in the mess, carefully copying the image he has open on his tool onto the thick, creamy stock paper, his fingers blackened with charcoal.

"Wow," Shepard breathes over his shoulder. He grins, but doesn't look up. "That's impressive. I didn't know you could draw."

"I taught myself how. After Brain Camp." He turns the stock a quarter, reaching to shade a mountainside. "Before Brain Camp, I actually used to take real pictures. Antique black and white film, actual antique camera; it was something I did with my grandfather." He double checks the line of the shadow he's filling in against the holo on his omni-tool, then smudges the edge with his thumb, softening it. "He even taught me how to develop the stuff. Had my own darkroom and everything. After Brain Camp and my implant, though-" He lets the words trail off as he lays the charcoal on its side and drags it in a jagged line across the paper - the river bed.

"Your migraines," she says, understanding in her voice as she slides into the seat next to him.

"Yeah, the chemicals were a bit much. Now I just copy the ones I like best with charcoals. Gives it the same kind of look."

"But without the headaches."

"Most of the time," he says with a smile, finally turning to look at her. "Every now and then, I decide I want to copy a picture that ends up being a pain in the ass to recreate. But that's no one's fault but my own."

"Why only the ones you like best?" she asks as she studies the drawing.

"Out here, stock paper is pretty damned dear, and it's harder than you'd think to find quality charcoals." The charcoal glides over the paper as he fills in the last bit of the picture - the last hill of the riverbank. He closes his omni-tool and slides the picture toward her with his clean hand.

Her eyes widen, and she's shaking her head even as her fingertips gingerly touch the edges of the paper.

"I couldn't," she starts.

"Of course you can. You said you wanted to see my pictures some time. Now you can see _that_ one whenever you'd like." He offers her his most rakish smile before reaching in front of her and signing his name with a flourish on the lower right corner. _For Shepard_ he writes just above his signature.

She chuckles softly, rolling her eyes. "Alright, Kaidan. Point taken. If I didn't know better, I'd say you're a genuine Renaissance man," she grins.

"Nah. I can't play an instrument to save my life, I've been told my singing sounds like a dying cat, and the one and only time I tried to recite a love poem to a girl, she laughed so hard she turned this really interesting shade of red. So I think you're safe there." She smiles at him and picks up the picture.

"Thanks," she says as she stands.

"Anything for you, Shepard," he responds before he can stop himself. She regards him for a moment, her eyes sparkling.

"Careful, or I might think you mean it," she grins. He doesn't tell her he already does.

##

It's two weeks later, and they've gone through absolute hell. His body aches in places he didn't even know he _had_, much less knew could ache, and he isn't sure who he's maddest at: himself, Shepard, or Ash. It shouldn't have been this way. He sags against his locker, pressing his forehead to the blessedly cool metal, and tries not to think about the hollowly vacant place to his right. About the fact that it _shouldn't_ be so empty.

His fingers work the combination dial, and he fumbles twice before swearing at it and getting it on the third attempt. He opens the door and turns away in the same motion and sets to stripping his armor. He's got the plates off and is trying to extricate himself from his neoprene underarmor when he finally turns back to his locker. A thick bundle he doesn't recognize sits on the bottom.

He wriggles his arms free of the neoprene that's nearly pinned his elbows to his hips and reaches for the package. The only identifier is a tag stuck to the top. He flips the tag over to find two words: _For justice_. His throat constricts. Shepard. She must have slipped this into his locker when he and Garrus had been prepping the Mako for the drop on Virmire. He rips the paper off the bundle: a thick stack of 80 lb paper and a package of charcoals he'd had his eye on for a couple of months. She must have grabbed them on the last supply run they'd made on the Citadel.

He strips the underarmor off as quickly as it will allow and hurriedly pulls his shipboard uniform on. He shoves his armor and underarmor into his locker in a haphazard pile and slams the locker shut to keep it from falling out. He carries his paper and his charcoals to the elevator and up to the mess where the light's better. And for the first time in nearly a decade, he draws without a holo to copy from. He draws pictures of Ash as she'd been on Eden Prime: tough and resilient and _alive_. He draws her how she'd been at her weapons table: pensive and thoughtful. He draws Ash and Shepard as he'd seen them once in the front seat of the Mako: covered in mud and heads thrown back as they howled with laughter.

He goes through what must be a quarter of the stack before his hand starts cramping up. Each picture is different, unique, but it isn't justice. Not even close. It doesn't dim the confusion of _why me and not her,_ but it does loosen the anger in his chest a little. He'll make sure she isn't forgotten.

**II.**

He stumbles into his apartment, not even turning on the lights as he chucks his duffel onto the couch. How long had he prayed for something like this? How long had he been wanting to just wake up and have the past two years be a nightmare? And then he'd had it all, everything he'd longed for, everything that had been taken from him was his again - she had been in his arms and saying his name and _right there_. But she had been with Ceberus and that had sucked all of the air from his lungs.

He scrubs his palms down his face and moves toward the bed. It's been a long, brutal day in more ways than one and God does he need to sleep. He falls gracelessly onto the mattress, wriggles up the bed until he gets to his pillow, and can't miss the glare of headlights going by outside his window. Lights that reflect off the glass front of the old fashioned picture frame he keeps on his bedside table. The only drawing of her he hasn't been able to put away yet. He reaches for the frame, runs his thumb along the line of her jaw under the glass.

He hasn't drawn in at least a year and a half. He tried, at first, but all he could draw were pictures of her - how she'd looked beneath him in those stolen hours before Ilos, her strawberry blonde hair spilling across the pillow, her eyes bright with love and tenderness. How she'd looked in those precious 48 hours of leave after they'd taken down Sovereign, sitting on the bed in nothing more than his shirt and her panties and a devilishly sexy grin. How she'd looked in quieter times on the Normandy, bent over a datapad.

Hell, he'd even gone so far as to taking a holo of a vista on some backwater planet they'd sent him to when he'd demanded immediate reassignment. When he went to draw it, he found it wasn't complete until he'd added her to it, a gentle breeze blowing her short, choppy locks across her face.

He sits up and turns on his lamp. He reaches into the drawer of his bedside table and takes out what little remains of the stock and charcoals she'd bought for him all those years ago and draws until his alarm clock goes off.

##

It's been two weeks since he sent her the e-mail (and that _ungodly_ amount of MREs), and he hasn't heard back. He isn't sure what that means - if she accepts his apology and understands everything he couldn't say but wanted to, if she thinks he's a hopeless idiot, if she wants to cut his heart out with a spoon.

He doesn't _want_ to think about the fact that he hasn't received any sort of response, but there isn't much else for him _to_ do: he's been grounded on the Citadel in the wake of the Horizon incident while the Alliance and the Council investigate Shepard and Ceberus and blithely ignore the real threat. Not like that surprises him - it's not like it's anything new.

He drops down from the chin-up bar he keeps hooked over his closet door and wipes the sweat from his face. Time for a shower, and then grocery shopping. And maybe a run on that really fancy art store on the Presidium - he finally ran out of paper last night.

After he's cleaned up and bought his groceries, he's on his way back to his apartment to drop off the perishables before heading back out to the Presidium. The bags of food block his view, and he nearly trips over a box on his doorstep. He unlocks the door and takes his groceries into the kitchen, leaving them on the counter to retrieve his mystery package.

He examines it carefully, not getting too close, and not yet touching it - there's no return address and no postal marks. And he doesn't recall ordering anything that would have needed to be delivered. He activates his omni-tool and sweeps his arm over the package. No explosives, no biologicals. Huh. He picks it up and carries it to his desk. It's lighter than its size would indicate, and he thinks he hears something sort of _sliding _inside.

He pries open the top of the box and finds a datapad and two packages of charcoals sitting atop a sketchbook. He carefully removes the datapad, not even daring to hope. When he activates the screen, stunning images from worlds he's never even seen scroll by under his thumb. He sets the datapad aside and reaches for the sketchbook and the charcoals. He stops the datapad's scroll on a view of a waterfall tumbling over rocks and flips open the sketchpad.

_It helps me remember what I'm fighting to save_ is scrawled across the first page.

Days later, he finally makes it through all the images on the datapad, only to realize that a picture of himself is hidden at the very end.

**III.**

When she shows up on the Citadel after surviving the Omega-4, it's all he can do to stop himself from bullying his way aboard the Normandy. Instead he waits on the docking platform. There's still quite a bit they need to discuss, after all. He knows what he wants, but isn't sure where he stands, doesn't know if she still feels the same.

When she finally emerges from the airlock, wearing a shirt with a holo of her own face on it (and claiming it's all Joker's fault when he asks), he can almost pretend that two years haven't gone by, that she hadn't really been dead, that this is the shore leave they'd both been looking forward to. Almost. He invites her to dinner before they've even made it to the elevator. She stares at him for just long enough that he wonders if it was a bad idea, but then she's smiling (God he's missed that) and asking if she can have time to pick up decent civs first. Of course she can. She can even have time to attend that elcor rendition of Hamlet if she likes, if only she promises to keep looking at him that way. But he doesn't say that. He only says he'll pick her up at 1900 instead.

Dinner goes well enough, though it's an effort not to share things he probably shouldn't, considering she's not Alliance anymore. Afterwards, he walks her back to her hotel and kisses her good night and letting her go after that is one of the hardest things he's done in his life.

He doesn't get halfway back to his apartment before a message notification buzzes on his omni-tool. He ducks into an alcove to open his email and finds that she's sent him dozens of pictures from all over the galaxy. He starts walking back toward home, flipping through the pictures as he goes. By the time he reaches his front door, a second email has buzzed through.

He opens it after he's inside, and as he glances it over, he's _incredibly_ grateful she waited to send this particular set of pictures. It's not much, and not even all that scandalous, but they're pictures of _her_. And the very last one is from tonight. Sitting on her hotel bed in nothing more than a t-shirt, panties, and a devilishly sexy grin.

He'll _definitely _draw that one. Later.

##

They send him to bring her in after the incident with the Alpha Relay. He supposes he isn't really surprised, and by the look on her face when he shows up outside of her shuttle, she isn't either.

She submits to the arrest with no hesitation, not even a dirty look, and it nearly breaks something inside of him. She _should_ fight this. She _should_ be arguing that what she did was for the best, was _necessary_. He's seen the reports; he _knows_ it was. But he needs to hear her say it. She never does.

Instead, when his lieutenant has taken a few steps ahead of them and they have a reasonable semblance of privacy, she leans toward him and whispers, "When you get on the Normandy, check the lap drawer of the desk in my quarters." He opens his mouth to ask her what she's talking about, but she isn't looking at him, and she's quickening her pace to catch up with his lieutenant.

He does as she asks. He doesn't know how she knew they'd give him the Normandy, or how she knew he'd be one of the first Alliance personnel allowed aboard, but she apparently did. Because when he makes it up to her cabin, it's completely untouched. He sinks into the chair behind her desk and tugs at the lap drawer. A holoframe and a sketchpad lay side-by-side in the drawer. The holoframe flickers to life as the drawer slides open. It's a picture of him.

He takes the sketchpad out of the drawer and flips it open.

**_Still_** _what I'm fighting to save_ is written on the first page.


End file.
